Getting Customers to Commit Already

If the brick-and-mortar world resembled digital commerce, every aisle and every checkout would be littered with shopping carts full of merchandise.

An average of 74.4 percent of global digital shopping carts are abandoned.1 In the digital world, it's easier for customers to ditch their carts and never look back. Some of the biggest contributors to cart abandonment, however, can hinge on the customer experience -- clunky user interfaces, time-sucking checkouts, questionable security, and too few payment options. Merchants can help address these issues by partnering with a trusted payments provider, such as Braintree.

Why customers leave their carts

Broadly speaking, customer conversion boils down to speed, convenience, and security -- even if these characteristics seem at odds. Before customers have a chance to make it to the checkout, load times impact how long they're likely to stay on a site and whether they are inclined to follow through with a transaction. Just a 1-second delay in load time can hurt conversion rates by 7 percent.2

When customers do head to the checkout, they often run into roadblocks throughout the process. Poor usability is part of the problem. Consumers want to move effortlessly between shopping and checkout, updating their carts and checking the final price along the way. The right user interface (UI) is also integral to a seamless experience -- and the payoff can be significant. The average large-sized ecommerce site can achieve 36 percent better conversion rate just by improving its checkout design.3

At the same time consumers want the ease of an express lane, they want the security of Fort Knox. A full 18 percent of consumers have reported abandoning their carts because they didn't trust the site with their credit card information.4

Whether because of security, convenience, or both, consumers cite too few payment options as another reason for leaving. It stands to reason. Alternative payment methods, such as e-wallets like PayPal, account for more than half of all global ecommerce today and are on track to reach 64 percent by 2020.5

How Braintree helps optimize conversion

Fortunately, merchants need not be experts in the art and science of checkout flow, payments, and security. That's Braintree's domain. Braintree's Drop-in UI offers merchants the ability to add a friction-free, easy-to-customize checkout flow through a ready-made integration for desktop and mobile.

The checkout process should be seamless, but storing sensitive payment information and monitoring fraud requires constant vigilance. Braintree solves this conundrum by making merchants eligible for PCI DSS SAQ-A compliance validation through its Drop-in UI. The Braintree Vault uses multiple encryption keys with split knowledge and dual control while conducting all API and Control Panel communication between merchants and Braintree via Transport Layer Security (TLS).

Of course, merchants can give customers the option of not even entering their payment information, shipping address, or billing address by offering PayPal. In a study of large-merchant checkouts by comScore, merchants that offered PayPal saw an average conversion rate of 87.5 percent.6 Taking that a step further, PayPal One Touch™ for mobile and desktop makes it possible, even for first-time customers, to check out with ease.

Braintree's solutions tackle cart abandonment from all angles, helping to convert digital browsers into repeat customers. For more information on payments tips and trends, check out our Resources page.